Peasant Girl hanging Clothes to dry

Morisot's outdoor paintings of working women — peasant girls, laundresses, nurses — form a counterpoint to her better-known images of leisure. This peasant girl engaged in the mundane task of hanging washing belongs to a group of works from the later 1870s that reflect her interest in Millet's rural subjects filtered through Impressionist plein-air technique. The domestic labor of hanging clothes becomes, under Morisot's brush, an occasion for studying the figure against open sky and the play of sunlight on white fabric — the same optical concerns that animated her paintings of elegant women on terraces.

The composition uses the strong vertical of the clothesline to structure the figure's gesture, while the white laundry echoes and amplifies the diffuse outdoor light. Morisot's brushwork is notably energetic in the sky and ground, contrasting with more careful attention to the figure's face and hands.